Software piracy is a broad term that encompasses software counterfeiting, OEM unbundling, softlifting, corporate software piracy and Internet software piracy. Software piracy is the critical issue plaguing the software industry today. According to the piracy study conducted by Business Software Alliance (BSA) in 2010, the bane of software piracy caused the industry damage to the tune $51 billion.
Various systems and methods are available in the prior art for prevention of software privacy. Most of these systems and methods rely on the procedure of product activation after installation for piracy control. The license validation procedure of product activation requires the user to provide valid product key to authentic the product at the time of activation. The product is activated on successful verification of the product key and, thereafter, the user receives regular and periodic updates. The software license, usually, also entitles the user to reinstallation and reactivation.
For reactivation, the user is again required to provide the unique product key assigned to the software after reinstallation. The unique product key provided by the user is again authenticated and the software thus reactivated again becomes entitled to receive regular and periodic updates, which are from the software vendor.
However, the procedure of reactivation is prone to be exploited by users to commit software piracy. Since there is no limit on reactivation, the user first purchases and registers a single user copy of the software, and then reactivates the same software with the same product key on multiple machines. This also creates a situation wherein pirated copies of the software, just like genuine copies, also request and receive updates. The software updates are important in order to fix known bugs, to add security patches, to add new functionality, and to keep the software compatible with other program. The barrage of update requests from pirated copies of the software only creates server congestion and, more critically, delays delivery of updates to genuine copies of the software. Thus, the bandwidth guzzling update requests, particularly from pirated copies, also cost the software companies in pecuniary terms.
Further, the existing solutions for privacy control also require users to call a support centre to complete the activation of the software. The legitimate users, who have paid a significant amount for the software license, have to provide details such as, for example, purchase details, personal details and adequate reasons for performing reactivation. Thus, the whole procedure of reactivation requires human intervention, consumes time and can cause a certain amount discomfort. These un-automated solutions for piracy control, therefore, require dedicated support teams, who may be compromised under duress and various other considerations, to take care of activation and re-activation related issues. Therefore, the solutions for piracy control in the prior art are not cost-effective, time-consuming and also degrades the user experience for the legitimate users.
Therefore, what is needed is an automated system and method for piracy control that is devoid of any human intervention for piracy control and that is cost-effective, consumes less time. What is further needed is an automated system and method for piracy control based upon update requests that significantly reduces the number of update requests by pirated copies of the software, and smoothens the overall user experience for the legitimate users of the software.